March 05, 2010

Красная шапочка

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, a young researcher headed into a castle of documents wearing a red beret as protection from the bitter cold.

The castle (or, well, archive), of course, was guarded against the cold and dirt of the outside world by two dragons... er, older ladies, who ran the coat check room. They watched carefully to make sure that propriety was maintained, using the power of their glares to cow the most sprightly incomers.

But on that day, when the young researcher entered the coat room to face the dragon, she wore the red beret, which turned out to have magical powers...

Because the dragon saw her and was disarmed--she exclaimed, "Ой, Красная Шапочка!," and clapped her hands in delight.

That was just a cheap dimestore beret, kind of itchy, that tended to leave a red mark on my forehead. But the beret was warm, and it was Russia and it was winter, and the archive had no heat.

I honestly can't remember what happened to that beret. I might have left it in Russia. It might have come home and been abandoned during one of my later moves. I wish I knew.

Since then, I've kind of thought of knitting a red hat again, but somehow hadn't gotten around to it. And then I saw Red Rose, and thought, aha. That's my red hat.

So late last year I bought yarn--Rowan Kid Classic in Cherry Red--that glowed and was just fuzzy enough to give the hat the feel of that picture.

And after checking through various projects on ravelry, I cast on for the medium, using 4 mm needles. And I knit and knit and knit... and realized it was too big.

No problem. I frogged, and started again on 3 mm needles. A nicer fabric, I thought, and it seemed like it was going to work.

And then I finished it, and realized... too big. Not awful, but given that I knew it wanted a bit of blocking to make it look nicer and neater... too big.

And then I was sad, and threw it in my project box, and stopped.

But last weekend, I decided to pull it out again. I reskeined the yarn. I cast on for a small. And just over a day later, I had a hat.

I'm finding it very difficult to get a picture that really captures the color, and utterly impossible to get a picture of it being worn that doesn't look ridiculous. But, there you go. Here it is, blocked.

For comparison, this is what it looked like, before blocking, straight off the needles. Much... bumpier, I guess, and a bit smaller, too. I blocked it over a soup bowl, one with quite a wide rim, which worked perfectly.

This was the pre-blocking side view, which doesn't look all that different from the post-blocking side view. Except, again, bumpier.

Even though I can't get a good picture of it, I actually really do like how this looks. It's just too bad I decided to do this just as March came in, because it may actually be bringing spring with it. Fingers crossed, wood knocked, and all that, but... whee!